In June my wife and I spent two weeks riding over 4000 miles of the Russian rail system from Moscow north to Murmansk on the Bering Sea. Our second trip to Russia after doing the Trans Siberian in 2001. This time our power was mostly steam using seven different engines. The Russians still have a number of modern steamers around from their end of steam in the 1950'2 They also have some engines given to USSR by FDR under lend/lease during WW2 that were built by Alco in the USA. Plenty of time for cab rides and runbys. Russia outside of Moscow and St Petersburg is like going back into the 50's. People still rely on railroads to get places and there are plenty of trains. The Trans Siberian is over 6000 miles all electrified!!! A train passes every fifteen minutes. No interstate highways to compete. Visited many medium sized cities that have stations and passenger facilities like Cleveland or Pittsburg. Rail gauge is a little wider then US but the trains seem about the same size. We went with a group from the International Railway Travelers (IRT). About 80 of us (from ten countries) had a private train made up of cars the communist party officials used to ride around in before things changed in Russia. IRT runs a great trip if you are inclined to do any of this. I would go back in a heartbeat!!! Phil

Sounds like a great trip.

Pictures?

Phil I presume you also followed the discussion thread here on the Amtrak subsidy. People continually forget to consider the cost of the dominant modes when complaining about the miniscule by comparison Amtrak subsidies. Anyone traveling extensively ANYWHERE else in the developed world sees how it can and does work elsewhere, as you so ably describe. When one comes back home it reinforces how underdeveloped our systems our because of the utter dominance by policy of the highway system here that preempts the vast majority of funds.

Highways are not inherently bad, but we have gone too far with that and it fosters our continued addiction and dependency on an energy source that we cannot produce here in large quantities anymore.